SHE TALKS DATA GRANT Recipients

While She Talks Data was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area, our mission is global. In November 2016, co-founders Brit Cava and Chloe Tseng spoke in front of hundreds at the Tableau Conference’s Data + Women Meetup TED-style talks. We shared our story of leveraging our strengths and friendship to start a local movement that continues to positively impact the women in our area.

We showed how one project can have a HUGE impact and were so inspired by the many ideas shared with us by others doing or interested in doing similar work. At the end of 2016, we announced that we’re offering five $200 grants sponsored by Slalom Consulting, Curtis Harris (Tableau Iron Viz 2016 winner), and Jeremy Poole. That's five grants total worth $1,000!

In total, we received 19 phenomenal applications from women around the world doing amazing work to increase the pipeline, support women in tech, and raise awareness on the issues surrounding women in the workforce. The selection committee had no easy task at hand to select the five recipients and we put a lot of thought into balancing impact, location, and overall diversity in the types of ideas we funded. Be sure to follow us on Twitter to learn about the rest of the entries and how you can help support them next week! Without further ado the five recipients are:

SHEROES - INDIASHEROES is an India based career platform for women. One of their major motives has been to support women in tech. They have been organizing community meet-ups across the country to bring together women from various fields. The objective of these meetups is to support women, connect them with relevant people and help them navigate their way through their career. 2017 onwards, they want these groups to be specific to women’s professions to help them better and connect with relevant mentors in their field. Women in tech will be one of their major focuses. SHEROES will be getting experts from all domains to help these women out. These meet-ups will include workshops and sessions on data science by experts. A grant and partnership with She talks data will help them propel our mission to reach out to more women.

WOMEN IN STEM - NEPALWomen in STEM is registered as social enterprise and they offer weekend educational and hands-on STEM Programs and Workshops for high schools kids and undergraduate young girls. This workshops includes Coding, Electronics and Design thinking that will open their creative sides , new innovations and also involve them to inspire the next generation girls to pursue STEM careers via many volunteer or paid activities. Studies and research shows that girls' toys turning them off from careers in STEM. The specific pathways are created on the early age and how children perceives the world around. So often young girls are inadvertently encouraged to pursue the other careers which are more associated with women - teachers, nurses, receptionist etc. Part of the solution to get more women involved in STEM careers is to influence them at a young age like experimenting with mathematics, technology and science toys that is problem solving, puzzling or figure out the solutions. Starting from small things like providing them play with smart phones, most of them are familiar these days, arduinos or simple computer games , programs etc. Hence the amazing idea of Women in STEM Nepal social enterprise was initiated. The WiSTEM team is working on two different age groups (10-16)years for STEM Education for kids in different schools targeting the root causes of the gender gap that begins from early age and (16-29)years on Hour of Code Workshops includes the follow up mentoring sessions for Undergraduate group of girls/women.to make them confident on what they are studying as we find the classroom male dominated most of times. The grant will support the weekend workshops for undergraduate and young girls on facilitating different technology/programming languages. Since they conduct most of the workshops in sustaining way, the grant can be accelerated for continuous weekend workshops. They will experiment with STEM focusing on HOW TO BUILD than WHAT TO BUILD via their design thinking workshops. The impacts that they are working on is bringing more girls into STEM/Technology. Girls and women have great potential and STEM fields can provide them the essential skills set and knowledge to build anything that they could imagine in their head be it the physical things like bridges, hardwares and machineries or something virtual like softwares, mobile applications or websites…Girls’ lack of participation in creation of today’s technology has the serious consequences for the future of technical innovations. Through WiSTEM they are involving more girls/women into this mainstream to make them contribute towards the creation of new ideas, technologies, valuable perspectives and solutions-defining as we believe they possess the uniqueness in decision making process and are the natural leaders. Everyone has their own ideas. The ability to code under proper mentorship helps their ideas turn into reality through STEM.

PRETTY STRONG SMART - DCOriginally, I started Pretty Strong Smart as a way to formalize my passion for women’s empowerment. At the same time, I applied for and was selected as Mrs. Maryland US Continental. My plan was to leverage my title to conduct talks in schools and community groups across Maryland as someone who is a Pageant Queen who lifts weights and loves data visualization (and works in the banking field). While I still plan to do that, when I started socializing this initiative, I received a lot of positive feedback and others want to do this in their area. To that end, I am building out the infrastructure of Pretty Strong Smart.

Through PSS, my mission is to support women's and girls’ empowerment through motivational talks with a call to action at schools and community groups to establish a belief system in empowerment at an early age. I have a particular interest in showing girls the possibilities that are present in STEM.

To date, I have established a website, www.prettystrongsmart.com which will contain resources and event information. On a monthly basis, I will be highlighting a woman on the Pretty Strong Smart Facebook page as someone who represents the ideals of Pretty Strong Smart. Additionally, I partnered with customizedgirl.com to open a storefront. Customized Girl believes in supporting women which is why they provide as much in royalties as possible on items sold. Royalties from my CG storefront will fund either promotional materials or the scholarship. My (stretch) goal for 2017 is to provide a $500 scholarship to help support educational costs for girls entering post-high school programs.

DATA PLUS WOMEN CHAPTER - ATLANTABorn in India. Brought up in the Middle East. And now, working in North America. I am from a lot of places and have experienced a diverse range of cultures. And within all these differences, I noticed a common thread. A society that respects its women have a brighter present and future and women need to support each other to achieve this. At TC16 I went to the Data + Women meet-up and felt incredibly inspired by the talks that raise awareness on gender inequality (wage disparity as an example). Data gives us the power to gain insights into how much we've achieved and what we have left in front of us. It allows us to question the status quo & investigate possible solutions. In joining Data + Women, I hope to support women from all backgrounds to empower themselves with tools, ideas and a strong network to use technology to usher change in our professional and personal spheres. It is my intention to use this grant to re-engage the Atlanta Data + Women Chapter and organize events on a regular basis as well as set up initiatives around training, education and partnerships with other Tableau groups/Tech Groups in Atlanta. Events will be targeted to understand and address challenges women face in the data industry or while using data in general. It is also going to provide a neutral space to talk about sensitive issues that women face in the workforce today in a meaningful and honest manner. All learnings will be captured and shared after the meet up and follow-ups will be encouraged to support each other.

UNITED BY DATA - PHOENIXWe intend to use the grant to launch our initiative of "United by Data." We're hoping to model "United by Data" after some of the core elements of She Talks Data. Our specific mission is to facilitate intimate gatherings where technology/data professionals can speak freely on a variety of topics. This initiative is aimed at women and they will receive preferential treatment for our events (if space is limited). One of our tenants will be to create a safe environment for women in tech to share and learn from each other. Our hope is that we will be able to create a close-knit community of data/technology female professionals in our local area (Phoenix, AZ).

United by Data will be led by Ann Jackson and Layla Manheim. Ann Jackson is currently co-lead of the Phoenix Tableau User Group and an active member of the Phoenix data community. Ann is a Sr. Healthcare Analyst at a major insurance company where she leads the data visualization strategy of a large shared services organization. She has a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and is currently pursuing an MBA. Ann also has a personal blog aimed at data visualization and technology: http://www.jacksontwo.com and is 1/2 of the data collaboration project http://www.thedatamashup.com Layla Manheim is a Business Intelligence Analyst within the data visualization center of excellence at the leading energy provider in the Phoenix area. She holds a master's degree in Library and Information Science with a focus on user-centered information design. Layla's unique background in Art and Design are evident in her contributions to the Tableau community social project #MakeoverMonday. Ann and Layla share a passion for advocating and promoting all things data through their T